Supporters Push For Expansion Of Center

For Stanley Landman`s mother, getting into the Joseph L. Morse Geriatric Center was a matter of life and death.

``She eats only kosher,`` Landman said. ``In any other home, she didn`t have the will to live. She wouldn`t eat.``

Landman was one of about 250 people who packed a state hearing Friday in West Palm Beach to support the Morse center`s application to build an addition that would more than double its size.

The 120-bed center in West Palm Beach is the only strictly kosher nursing home in Palm Beach County. About 270 elderly people who want to live in a Jewish environment are on the center`s waiting list.

Adminstrators of the center say that without additional beds, the average wait for these people may be as long as eight years.

The Morse center`s expansion plans include adding 160 nursing home beds, a 20- to 30-bed rehabilitation facility, an adult day-care center and a home health agency.

But planners at the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services say Palm Beach County already has all the nursing home beds it will need for the next three years.

So the Morse center asked for the hearing in order to give itself a chance to state its case for a special home for the Jewish community before HRS decides later this month whether to approve the expansion application.

The center submitted a petition to HRS with 9,152 signatures from people supporting their application. And many residents of the center and relatives of residents spoke on its behalf.

Landman said his mother, Marie, had to wait in three nursing homes for more than a year before she could get into the Morse center. During that wait, she was hospitalized twice for dehydration and malnutrition because she would not eat the non-kosher meals she was served, he said.

``Since she`s been in the Morse home she`s a different person,`` he said. ``Now she feels at home.``

Center Executive Director Drew Gackenheimer said the waiting list at his facility has been growing steadily since it opened in July 1983.